08 February History
- 1587 - Mary, Queen of Scots is beheaded in Fotheringhay Castle for her alleged part in the conspiracy to usurp Elizabeth I.
- 1807 - At Eylau, Napoleon's Marshal Pierre Agureau attacks Russian forces in a heavy snowstorm.
- 1861 - Delegates from seceded states adopt a provisional Confederate Constitution.
- 1862 - Union troops under Gen. Ambrose Burnside defeat a Confederate defense force at the Battle of Roanoke Island, N.C.
- 1865 - Confederate raider William Quantrill and men attack a group of Federal wagons at New Market, Kentucky.
- 1887 - Congress passes the Dawes Act, which gives citizenship to Indians living apart from their tribe.
- 1900 - British General Buller is beaten at Ladysmith, South Africa as the British flee over the Tugela River.
- 1904 - In a surprise attack at Port Arthur, Korea, the Japanese disable seven Russian warships.
- 1910 - The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated.
- 1924 - The gas chamber is used for the first time to execute a murderer.
- 1942 - The Japanese land on Singapore.
- 1943 - British General Orde Wingate leads a guerrilla force of "Chindits" against the Japanese in Burma.
- 1952 - Elizabeth becomes Queen of England after her father, King George VI, dies.
- 1962 - The U.S. Defense Department reports the creation of the Military Assistance Command in South Vietnam.
- 1965 - South Vietnamese bomb the North Vietnamese communications center at Vinh Linh.
- 1971 - South Vietnamese ground forces, backed by American air power, begin Operation Lam Son 719, a 17,000 man incursion into Laos that ends three weeks later in a disaster.
- 1990 - CBS television temporarily suspends Andy Rooney for his anti-gay and ant-black remarks in a magazine interview.
08 February Birthdays
- 412 - St. Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople
- 1820 - William T. Sherman, Union general in the American Civil War.
- 1828 - Jules Verne, French novelist, one of the first writers of science fiction (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea).
- 1834 - Dmitri Ivanovich Medeleyev, Russian chemist, developed the periodic table of elements.
- 1851 - Kate (O'Flaherty ) Chopin, novelist, short story writer (The Awakening).
- 1906 - Chester F. Carlson, physicist, inventor of xerography, the electrostatic dry-copy process.
- 1906 - Henry Roth, writer (Call it Sleep).
- 1911 - Elizabeth Bishop, poet.
- 1926 - Neal Cassaday, writer, counterculture proponent.
- 1931 - James Dean, film actor and 1950s teenage icon (Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden, Giant).
- 1940 - Ted Koppel, television journalist.